Appellate court questions long juvenile prison terms

Court upheld 270-year sentence for violent attacker Ramon Rosario

The 4th District Court of Appeal recently affirmed the conviction and 270-year… (Florida Department of Corrections )

September 7, 2013|By Marc Freeman, Sun Sentinel

There's no question Ramon Rosario's prison sentence of 270 years will keep the 21-year-old felon from Lake Worth locked up for the rest of his life.

But there is a question about whether the sentence imposed on Rosario in 2011 for violent crimes committed when he was 17 violates the law, according to an opinion filed last week by the 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach.

The appellate court affirmed Rosario's sentence for a spring 2010 crime spree in Palm Beach County. Yet the court also repeated its earlier concerns about the constitutionality of such lengthy prison terms for juvenile defendants on non-murder charges.

The judges want the Florida Supreme Court to explore the issue as a matter "of great public importance."

Sentencing young criminals to life without a chance for parole, for crimes other than murder, is cruel and unusual punishment and violates the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2010.

That 6-3 ruling was for the case of Terrance Graham, who as a Jacksonville teen was sentenced to life for armed robberies.

The Graham ruling led to reduced sentences for dozens of Florida inmates convicted of violent crimes, including rape, kidnapping and armed robbery.

Advocates for juvenile justice reforms say the Supreme Court intended for juvenile defendants to gain release from prison based on "demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation" — and not to face decades upon decades in the slammer.

But the nation's highest court did not specify an appropriate length of time for those sentences, prompting the state appellate court's question in the Rosario case and others it reviewed this year.

The 4th District Court of Appeal questioned whether the Graham ruling applies "to lengthy term-of-years sentences that amount to de facto life sentences."

"If so, at what point does a term-of-years sentence become a de facto life sentence?" the appellate court asked.

"Without further guidance from our supreme court or the United States Supreme Court, it is logistically impossible to determine what might or might not constitute a de facto life sentence — assuming such a concept is to be considered in the first instance," the appellate court wrote.

The Rosario opinion, written by Judge Martha C. Warner and also signed by Judges W. Matthew Stevenson and Carole Y. Taylor, said Rosario clearly was sentenced to life in prison — although it's not worded as such by the trial court.

That's because he got 270 years, and even serving the state-required minimum of 85 percent of the term "is still well over the natural life of any person. Thus, although this is a term-of-years sentence, it is an actual life sentence," Warner wrote.

Rosario was a leading member of the "Head Shot Committee," a group of youths who invaded homes, kidnapped residents and robbed them, authorities said. The committee's enterprise finally ended with Rosario's arrest in June 2010 following a shootout with a Boca Raton Police officer.

In December 2010, Rosario pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts, including racketeering, home-invasion robbery with a firearm, kidnapping and aggravated assault on a police officer.

Circuit Judge Jeffrey Colbath sentenced Rosario in September 2011, finding Rosario violated a plea agreement to testify against co-defendants in the robbery ring and other cases.